Australian Open 2020 welcomes largest ever tournament crowds

Tennis Australia has announced that a total of 812,174 fans attended the Australian Open over its 14 days, smashing the previous attendance record of 796,435 from 2019.

With the world’s top players exciting crowds at Melbourne Park with a thrilling two weeks of tennis, not only where attendance records broken again but more than $6 million was also raised by the global tennis community for bushfire relief.

On court, Sofia Kenin of the USA and Novak Djokovic of Serbia won the women’s and men’s singles titles, with Kenin securing her first Grand Slam title.

In addition to the record overall attendance, for the fourth time in the tournament’s history attendance in the first week surpassed 500,000 fans, with 550,645 attendees, smashing the previous record of 537,226 for Australian Open 2019 while the middle Saturday attracted a record attendance of 93,709.

Media coverage saw almost 900 matches were covered live across all draws, with a total of 21 courts with live cameras at any one time across Melbourne Park.

Melbourne Park also had 850 metre² of digital LED screens were used across all three stadiums at Melbourne Park – Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and and Melbourne Arena.

Online, the ausopen.com website had 9.53 million unique users, an increase of 50.5% from last tournament with the top five countries visiting the site being Australia, United States, Germany, India and the UK.

However, that led to an on-court protest by tennis legends Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe leading fresh calls for Melbourne Park’s Margaret Court Arena to be renamed as a result of Court’s anti same-sex marriage stance.

Navratilova and McEnroe yesterday paraded an ‘Evonne Goolagong Arena’ banner, suggesting that Court’s name be stripped from the venue in favour of Goolagong, who won 14 grand slams as a player.

During the event, more than 2050 ANZ Tennis Hot Shots participants played on Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne Arena, show courts and multiple outside courts ahead of the day sessions.

More than 180,000 children and parents experienced the AO Ballpark presented by Emirates and the AO Hilltop, double the 2019 figure of 80,000

Prior to the tournament a record 19,454 people attended Kids Tennis Day on Saturday 18th January.

Those who attended joined in activities at the all-new AO Ballpark at Birrarung Marr, played ANZ Tennis Hot Shots and watched Australian Open qualifying.

Popular children’s characters including the likes of Baby Shark, Peppa Pig, Batman, Wonder Woman and Paddington were all on show to entertain the crowds.

Lower image: John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova walk onto the court at the Australian Open calling for the renaming of the Margaret Court Arena. Courtesy @KevinCChang/Twitter.